


By The Pricking of My Thumbs

by Tendergingergirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Literary Intertext, Meta, ray bradbury - Freeform, something wicked this way comes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-26 18:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tendergingergirl/pseuds/Tendergingergirl
Summary: January 12, 2017





	By The Pricking of My Thumbs

  _…Something Wicked This Way Comes…_

_(apologies for the length. There was a lot to share)_

“There was only one thing sure.  
Two lines of Shakespeare said it.  He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:

So vague, yet so immense.

He did not want to live with it.

Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it all the rest of his life.

**Something Wicked This Way Comes _(1962)_**

The youthful experiences that made Bradbury into a writer preoccupied him throughout his life. Bradbury’s much-beloved novel Dandelion Wine is a thinly veiled fictionalization of many of his sweeter reminiscences — but even these could take an odd turn. “I loved to watch my grandmother eviscerate the turkey,” he once said, a memory that sums up his most characteristic literary trait: taking homey Americana and bending it in a violent or grotesque direction. **His most seminal stories wrung terror out of common occurrences, such as going into a ravine that ran through the residential section of his native Waukegan, Illinois at nighttime. In the story “The Night,” an eight-year-old boy — the author’s alter-ego — simply scares himself. There is no ghost or criminal lurking, only the panic that wells up in all of us when we get lost in a dark, damp place and know we are alone in the universe, in the “vast swelling loneliness,” feeling the presence of “an ogre called Death.”**

“Ray Bradbury spent his childhood goosing his imagination with the outlandish. Whenever mundane Waukegan was visited by the strange or the offbeat, young Ray was on hand…He read heavily in **Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs** ; the latter’s inspirational and romantic children’s adventure tales earned him Bradbury’s hyperbolic designation as “probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world.” Bradbury…loved carnivals, magicians, mind readers, and skeletons. 

_“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”_  This was the quote given by Mark Gatiss upon the death of Ray Bradbury. That comes from  **Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). “** Much of the novel centers on a carousel that changes the rider’s age, giving youth to the old and age to the young. At best, those who take the ride end up miserable outcasts. At worst, they become soulless monsters. **If eternal youth is no blessing, neither is a return to what has been outgrown, or an impatient leap to what has not yet been grown into. Time is precious.** Mr. Halloway is the person through which Bradbury expresses his philosophy concerning good and evil. The theme that emerges in this novel, as well as in several of Bradbury’s other works, is that light is good and dark is evil. Bradbury’s carnival is the epitome of this darkness. It is the “something wicked” that “this way comes. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.”

William "Will” Halloway, born one minute before midnight, October 30. Will is described as having done “only six years of staring.” ( **He is described as having white-blonde hair with eyes “as clear as summer rain”.) Will is naturally obedient and wary of getting involved in difficult situations; nonetheless, he takes on an active role in fighting the carnival’s evil power.**  
James “Jim” Nightshade, born one minute after midnight on October 31. Jim is brooding and brash, acting as a foil for Will’s cautiousness and practicality. **(He is described as having wild and tangled chestnut brown hair and eyes the color of green grass.) Jim yearns to become older, which makes him vulnerable to the carnival’s temptations, but he is ultimately saved by his friendship with Will. Jim represents good that is always on the verge of giving into temptation, while Will, though he has crises and doubts, is the part of us that resists giving in.**

Charles Halloway, the father, is older and filled with regrets, spending all of his time in the library, where he is cornered by Mr. Dark, throwing around his lightening, and taking his life, page by page.

_“I know who you are_ ,” Holloway challenges. “ _You are the Autumn People. Where do you come from? The dust. Where do you go? The grave.”_

**MORIARTY  Did you know that dust is largely composed of human skin?  
 Doesn’t taste the same, though. You want your skin fresh .. … just a little crispy. That’s all people really are, you know: dust waiting to be distributed. And it gets everywhere …  in every breath you take, dancing in every sunbeam, all used-up people.**

_“Yes, we are the Hungry Ones,”_ Dark concurs. _“Your torment calls us like dogs in the night._ **…(Redbeard?)**

_And we do feed and feed well. _To stuff yourselves__  
on other people’s nightmares.  
And butter our plain bread  
with delicious pain 

Funerals, bad marriages.  
lost loves, lonely beds.  
That is our diet.  
We suck that misery and find it sweet.  
We search for more, always.

“ _But no man’s a hero to himself._ ” Charles Holloway

_They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries._

**“Today we honor the deathwatch beetle that is the doom of our society and—in time, one feels certain—our entire species. But, anyway, let’s talk about John.”SH**

_They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.”SW_

**“The roads we walk have demons beneath, and yours have been waiting for a very long time.”**

_“You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot!”_ SW

“God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”SW

“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.” SW

**John** : ** _Why did they try and kill me? IF they knew you were on to them, why go after me? Put me in the bonfire?_**

**Sherlock** : ** _I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing._**

 Pam Grier, playing the Dust Witch, A blind soothsayer, usually in her Black tweeds, at one point changes into a ghost Bride( Salome) to tempt a man. However, her increased sensitivity to the presence and emotions of other people makes her vulnerable to positive feelings.The Dust Witch even comes in her balloon to find Jim and Will, but they outsmart her.

## Then we come to the Mirror Maze.

This Mirror Maze is one of the major temptations that the carnival offers its customers since **it capitalizes on an almost universal weakness, man’s dissatisfaction with himself. Bradbury describes the experience inside this particular Mirror Maze through the use of water imagery**. When someone enters the maze, he experiences an “ocean” of mirrors silently rushing in upon him. These mirror oceans can be quite dangerous. Will characterizes this danger by saying that someone can never tell just what might be swimming in the water, and there is even the possibility that a person might find himself in a watery, bottomless sea.

Dark kidnaps the children, taking them to the Mirror Maze. Charles Halloway must overcome his fears to get them out. Laughter proves to be a powerful weapon against the inherent wickedness of the Carnival. At the sound of Mr. Halloway’s laughter, the freaks outside freeze from fear and the Mirror Maze crashes to the ground “in domino fashion.”

So…Love & Courage. The themes are woven throughout all of Sherlock and especially the new episodes. It’s been called Amo, it’s at the **[20 Minutes](http://tendergingergirl.tumblr.com/post/155662393696/20-minutes)** mark of every episode. it’s through [**Thomas Gray**](http://tendergingergirl.tumblr.com/post/155653258931/bliss-john-locke-elegy-in-a-country) "where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” _Gray is not promoting ignorance, but is reflecting with nostalgia on a time when he was allowed to be ignorant, his youth_ …all of the mirrors found surrounding Sherlock are increasing[ **x**](http://iamjohnlocked4life.tumblr.com/post/155571227987/through-a-different-lens). Even[  **Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9**](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Ftemplates%2Fstory%2Fstory.php%3FstoryId%3D5487727&t=ZjNjNGNiMGRjZTdlYmQzZDAxNTE3MTc3YWJjNzg4NjM1MmRkOGIxMSxpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1), played in The Lying Detective, is about brotherhood & unity.            From  **[through-a-glass-darkly](http://tendergingergirl.tumblr.com/post/155577881381/through-a-glass-darkly): **

_“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. …And now these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.”_

Something Wicked This Way Comes has served as a direct influence on several fantasy and horror authors, including Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. Gaiman paid tribute to Bradbury’s influence on him and many of his peers in a 2012 The **[Guardian article](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2012%2Fjun%2F06%2Fray-bradbury-neil-gaiman-appreciation&t=NGUxZWNhZjI0ZWNlMjEyOTdjYTY2MGZhYjgzMjhmOGJjZGVhMmYzNixpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1) **following Bradbury’s death and [**here**](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fjournal.neilgaiman.com%2F2012%2F06%2Fray-bradbury.html&t=ZmM2ZWMzZmVhMDM0ZmExNTkxZDAwYWJkZWRhNzk2MWFmMWQ5YTY1MSxpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1). British TV comedy series The League of Gentlemen features the **[Pandemonium Carnival of Papa Lazarou](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPapa_Lazarou&t=MDI4YjM4YzM2MzExYzRhZDkxYTJiODQ5MDk4ZWZlMzY5NzRmZGZhNyxpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1). **[The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2bdkE6DquWg&t=MmZmNzk3NTE2MTdiM2MzNWY1Y2I2NTFjNDIxZDBiZTJhNjkyNzZkNSxpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1)

[he who grew up reading sherlock holmes by harlan ellison](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fsubterraneanpress.com%2Fmagazine%2Fsummer_2014%2Fhe_who_grew_up_reading_sherlock_holmes_by_harlan_ellison&t=MTVkYmJhMmZmZTcxYjEyMmJkN2NjM2NhOTA3MTMyOGY3NmU0NGNmNyxpOVFLNlpJeQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155756063241%2Fby-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs&m=1)

 


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